


I Lost Myself On A Cool Damp Night

by goldtintedskies



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, One Shot, Sad Caleb Widogast, Waltzing, i love one (1) hobo wizard, very vague jester/caleb i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-12 00:27:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15983705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldtintedskies/pseuds/goldtintedskies
Summary: Waltzing and alcohol lead Caleb to reexamine his past and have some revelations about his present.





	I Lost Myself On A Cool Damp Night

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Lilac Wine because y'know booze and angst

As Jester leads him around the improvised dancefloor Caleb comes to the realisation that he’s drunk. He is dimly aware that he hasn’t been this quite drunk in a long time, and a quiet part of his brain reminds him that he hasn’t danced like this for even longer. The last time he performed these steps seems like a lifetime ago, the memory of it belonging to a smiling young man who died screaming in front of his burning home. 

Perhaps it is this nostalgia, this intoxication; this reminder of the last time he felt truly happy, which leads him to mistake Jester for Astrid. They are of similar height, and Jester’s hands feel so familiar switching from his right shoulder to his waist as his hands drunkenly slip out of position the way they always did. The room goes hazy while they whirl, and the interior of the tavern swirls around him as the music draws him back to a time before all this, to that final happy memory of waltzing and youthful love.

\------------------------------

They were young, the three of them. Only children really, although that was a thought he rarely allowed himself to have. Barely past puberty, they had all been delighted when they were accepted to the Soltryce Academy. The news of their admission to the most prestigious magical school in the Empire spread through their little town like wildfire. Beaming up at them with proud smiles each of the townspeople had offered a little of their hard-earned gold up to them to help ease them into city life. Caleb looks back at that memory now with disgust; the people who helped to raise him gifting him the gold which would ultimately aid him in killing his parents. He has often mused on the irony of the phrase with which they combatted his polite refusal of the gold. 

“It takes a village to raise a child” the townspeople had reminded him. 

To Caleb it seemed that it took a village to murder his parents too.

\------------------------------

Blumenthal was small, nestled in the heart of the Zemni Fields. Tradition had deep roots there, despite their proximity to Rexxentrum; the mind which controlled the iron fist of the Empire. Zemenian was spoken at home while Common was taught, by law, in school from the youngest possible age. The people of the Zemni Fields continued their worship of the Archeart for centuries in secret, and the children were taught to parrot the Empire’s beliefs in public leaving the crownsguard and the titheman none the wiser.

Perhaps, Caleb thinks, letting drunken thoughts sweep through his brain, perhaps, this is why he was so convinced by that memory of his parents planning rebellion.

Even in his inebriated state, he curses his childish mind for believing the memory Ikithon planted in his head. The signs that it was fake are all too visible for him now. They keep him up at night, that fateful afternoon when Trent had instructed them to kill their parents playing on a loop behind his eyelids for the last sixteen years. So often, he spends the night mentally screaming at his younger self not to believe Trent. He considers the lack of sleep to be a fraction of the punishment he deserves for the heinous acts he has committed. 

In the memory that he no-longer believed to be his, he saw his parent speaking of rebellion, of betraying the empire in Common. He was stupid, stupid, too stupid to realise that his parent s never spoke Common at home. He was an idiot for not realising that Trent, his mentor, his betrayer, did not know a shred of Zemenian. His parent had discussed treason in front of the statue to the Dawnfather in the house in his mind. Caleb should have known, should have remebererd that Trent had visited his house exactly once and that one time their shrine to the Archeart had been hidden under the floorboards and replaced with a far more legal statue of the Dawnfather. 

Caleb could not remember the seeing the statue of the Dawnfather at any other time during that trip home.

He was stupid and naive and disgusting and for his naivety his parents had paid with their lives

\--------------------------

As he turns in time with the music, Caleb wonders if Eodwulf and Astrid, wherever they may be, think back to those memories. If in their adulthood they question the inconsistencies in their minds, if over time those memories have driven them to the insanity which had taken Caleb upon hearing his parents beg for their lives. He wonders if they do not think back to that day at all, if they treat it like any other day in the service of the Empire. Some hidden, dark part of him wishes he had not broken, wishes that he never knew the truth of what he had done.

After he had escaped the asylum, after he had been returned to himself, he was haunted by the spectres of his parents. He saw his father smiling at him in every reflection. His mother in the pity in the eyes of every housewife who stopped to press coin and food into his hands as he begged in an endless series of nameless towns.

On the good days he had enough coin to buy food and have a little left over to save. On the bad days, he saw flames whenever he closed his eyes and the pleading cries of his mother echoed in his ears. On the bad days he took his saved-up coin and bought the strongest liquor he found and drank and drank until his head was silent and when he closed his eyes he saw nothing except the black of night, and he awoke face down in the gutter where he belonged. 

Tonight, he decides, he will not end up like that. He feels safer here, among this strange collection of people, than he has since he was just a boy standing between his parents staring awestruck at the bright lights of Rexxentrum. He is a little surprised that even in his intoxicated state he knows that he can trust Jester to stop him from waking up cold and alone surrounded by unforgiving townspeople.

\------------------------------------

He remembers the last time he danced the waltz, wrapped in Astrid’s arms, both of them young and easily tipsy after two of glasses of wine.

It was in the final days of their stay with Trent. He had become more trusting of them towards the end, Caleb reminisces. He sung their praises, although the beatings remained, and spoke grandly of a final test before they could join him in true service to the Empire. 

They had spent the day killing chained men, women and children, and it did not bother them. Caleb knows now how stupid they were, how idealistic and foolish to think that those weakened bound souls had posed any real threat to the Empire. He often questions if any of the people he had killed for Trent were truly rebels or if they had simply worshipped the wrong gods or if they had committed the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That evening, Trent had been away, whispering in the King’s ear, leaving his young charges to entertain themselves however they pleased; Eodwulf had already slunk off to bed having successfully convinced one of the kitchen girls to join him.

Caleb had hummed the tune of a waltz as Astrid lead him around the parlour of Trent’s country house. The next afternoon Trent would summon them to his office. 

A week after that, Caleb’s parents would be dead by his own had. A month, a year, a decade after that Caleb would be broken, trapped within the walls of his mind. 

Sixteen years later Caleb would dance the waltz again.

Sixteen years later Caleb would feel happy again, for the first time in a very, very long time.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr @ http://feyfrumpkin.tumblr.com/


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